Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a shooting notification technique at the time of shooting in a dark place.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, along with improvement of the sensitivity of an image capturing apparatus, a wide variety of scenes are shot. It is desired to implement a function of enabling a wide spectrum of users to readily shoot a special scene such as a starry sky which could not be readily shot with a conventional technique.
At the time of shooting in a dark place such as the starry sky, a self-timer shooting is used to prevent camera shake. The purposes of a self-timer itself are to shoot people in a group photo and to prevent camera shake, as described above.
As for such shooting method using the self-timer, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-091792 proposes a method of starting self-timer shooting when the number of detected faces increases. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-198564 proposes a method of starting to count a self-timer when a specific person enters a shooting range. On the other hand, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-178201 proposes a method for changing the light emission luminance of an LED or the like to clearly notify the user of the start of self-timer shooting even if the ambient environment is bright.
In self-timer shooting, providing a notification of a shooting timing to an object by turning on an LED or the like is an important function in the case of shooting a person. For the purpose of camera shake prevention, however, it is unnecessary to turn on the LED. In, for example, nature photography in which fireflies or the like are shot, LED light emission may become obstructive.
The technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-091792 is an effective method for shooting a group photo including a photographer himself/herself, but providing a notification of a shooting timing to an object is not mentioned. Furthermore, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-198564 describes a case in which the LED or the like is used to provide a notification that the photographer himself/herself has entered the shooting range when performing self-portrait photography, but does not mention a shooting notification method when performing self-timer shooting for the purpose of camera shake prevention at the time of shooting in a dark place. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-178201 relates to the LED light emission control at the time of self-timer shooting of a high-luminance scene in which the ambient environment is bright, and does not consider shooting in a dark place.
There is an increasing need to readily take a commemorative picture against the backdrop of the starry sky.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-160492 proposes a method in which at the time of slow synchronization shooting of a person at night, a nightscape is shot first by long-exposure shooting and then a person is shot by causing an electronic flash to emit light. Furthermore, Japanese Patent No. 4892434 proposes a method in which if, among shutter sounds (“cli” and “ck” of a click), the second sound effect (“ck”) in synchronism with the end of a previous shooting operation is being output at the start of a shooting operation, the first sound effect (“cli”) in synchronism with the start of the shooting operation is not output, or the second sound effect is stopped.
However, in the method of separately shooting a person and nightscape, as described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-160492, it is difficult for an object to understand a shooting time. In the method of providing a notification of an exposure period to the user by the shutter sounds, as described in Japanese Patent No. 4892434, an object away from a camera may not hear the sounds. Alternatively, if a silence setting is ON, no sound is output. Therefore, it may be difficult for the object to grasp when shooting is performed. If the object cannot recognize a shooting timing, he/she cannot know how long he/she should pose within the shooting range.